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William L. Mack, W'61
By Kelly J. Andrews
Wharton helped shape Bill Mack when
he was an ambitious undergraduate with
an interest in real estate. He had no way
of knowing then that he would someday
return the favor.
As chairman of Penn's Facilities and Campus Planning
Committee, Mack championed the addition of Wharton's
stateoftheart Jon M. Huntsman Hall, as well as new academic,
residential, and retail spaces that have transformed
campus in recent years. And he helped move Wharton
into the future with the 1999 establishment of the William
and Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation
through a $10 million gift. His deep commitment is ongoing—Mack
serves on Wharton's Board of Overseers and
as vice chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University
of Pennsylvania. He is also a former chairman of Wharton's
Undergraduate Board.
From the time that Mack left Wharton and until he reconnected with the School more than 20 years ago, he was
building one of the world's largest real estate organizations.
Mack is the founder and managing partner of Apollo Real
Estate Advisors, a multibillion-dollar real estate investment
and development company, which operates in 40 U.S. states
and 20 countries. He is also chairman of the Mack-Cali
Realty Corp., a publicly traded REIT with a total market capitalization of $6.5 billion.
Mack was an entrepreneur even in his very first job
attempting to do equity investments with New York industrial leasing broker Robert Joseph and Co. Smart,
bold, and enterprising, 23yearold Mack proposed that
the company's equity positions include him as a partner.
While working there, Mack saw new opportunities.
"Most of the inquiries for new warehouse space was
for New Jersey—a foreign place for a boy from Queens,"
he says. In 1963, he and his family bought an affordable, welllocated 5 1/2 acre parcel in the swamps near the
Lincoln Tunnel. ("Today it's called the Meadowlands," he
says. "It's more stylish.") He set up a trailer, and all of a
sudden, he was a developer.
The Mack Company began building onestory industrial warehouses, then branched into office space. Today
Apollo Real Estate Advisors has codeveloped marquee
buildings around the world, including the new Time
Warner Center in New York, and MackCali owns and operates a portfolio of office buildings with 35.9 million
square feet of Class A office space.
Mack credits his Wharton education for much of his
early success, giving him a distinct advantage.
"In those days, real estate was really a cottage industry. Most of the people in the business did not have
a finite understanding of finance, but used a pretty good
backoftheenvelope sense. The level of sophistication 40
years ago was marginal."
"My becoming an entrepreneur was a combination of
being inborn and the training that I got at Wharton," he
continues. "I was always good at numbers, but Wharton
helped me learn how to work out deals."
v
As Mack grew more successful, his civic commitments
expanded. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he helped
strengthen New York as chairman of Javits Center, the first
chairman of Long Island Power Authority, and a member
of Empire State Urban Development Agencies. Today, in
addition to his work with Wharton, Mack is currently Vice
Chairman of the North Shore Long Island Jewish Health
System and Chairman of the Board for the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation.
"When you have good health and prosperity, you owe it to
the community to give something back," he says. "Wharton
and the University are great bastions of learning, and the
Wharton School is a leader in training business talent on a
worldwide basis. I am very proud of the work I do."
"The more I get involved with Wharton and Penn, the
more rewarding it is."
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